Class of 2012 Abstract / Specific Aims: To assess the number of patients referred to ASHLine during the health screenings performed by University of Arizona College of Pharmacy students; and to identify the comfort level of students who asked patients about their smoking status. Methods: An anonymous questionnaire was sent via electronic mail to evaluate students’ comfort levels in implementing a smoking cessation referral program and subject demographics. Chart reviews quantified the number of patients referred to a smoking cessation program. Main Results: A total of 1,147 patients were screened for smoking cessation, 85 of which said they still smoked. Of the 85 who smoked, only 2 (0.17%) were referred to ASHLine. There was no significant increase in the comfort level of students (based on three domains) who participated in a smoking cessation training program or students in different years of their professional education. It was found that more students were comfortable with completing the required smoking cessation paperwork if they attended three or more health fairs (P=0.014). Conclusions: The comfort level of students with smoking cessation education is independent of the number of patients referred to a local smoking cessation program.

Class of 2014 Abstract / Specific Aims: To assess and compare prescribing error-identification rates by healthcare professionals Methods: Pharmacists and nurses from Northwest Medical Center were invited to participate in this study. Participants completed a questionnaire that consisted of 10 fictitious patient prescriptions. They were asked to evaluate the accuracy of the prescriptions and indicated the type of error found, if any. The number of correctly identified prescribing errors, correct types of errors, and error identification rates for each group were calculated. Rasch analysis was used to assess the validity and reliability of the questionnaire. Wilcoxon and Rasch-Welch t-test were used to assess the difference in prescribing error-identification rates. Main Results: Thirty-five out of 700 nurses and 6 out of 20 pharmacists completed the questionnaire (response rate 5% and 30% respectively). Pharmacists had significantly higher error-identification rates compared to nurses (p = 0.0001). Additionally, pharmacists were able to correctly identify the type of error in each prescription (p < 0.0001). Conclusion: Pharmacists were significantly able to correctly identify more prescribing errors and more types of prescribing errors in 10 fictitious prescriptions compared to nurses. Several assumptions and limitations were identified in this study, therefore future studies are warranted.

Class of 2005 Abstract / Objective: To determine what factors rural pharmacists believe affect their ability to counsel patients and provide pharmaceutical care. Subjects: Pharmacy managers in retail pharmacies in rural cities in Arizona (population <30,000). Methods: Questionnaires were administered through phone conversations regarding amount of time spent on counseling, items included in a counsel, views on counseling, factors impacting ability to counsel, patient care services provided, access to educational materials, difficulty and methods of getting time off, number of vacations taken, commute time to work, years working in a rural area and as a pharmacist, and location of college that pharmacists graduated from. Results: Questionnaires were completed by 40 pharmacy managers (80% response rate). Pharmacists that spent more time counseling believed that counseling had a larger impact on patient outcomes that those that counseled less. Those that counseled more had also taken more vacations in the previous ten years. Implications: Pharmacists views on the impact that their counseling has on patient outcomes affects the amount of time they spend on counseling of patients.

The rapid and accelerating growth of the College of Pharmacists of British Columbia between 1974 and 1976 led to concern in the profession for what growth might reasonably be expected in the future. It was known that recent entrants had experienced difficulty in obtaining pharmacy employment in B.C. and this aroused anxiety about the capacity of the system to absorb future growth. As an extension of its work in employment information, employment relations and pharmacy economics, the B.C. Pharmacists' Society established a committee to focus on the manpower supply and demand balance of the profession. In order to address these concerns a study was designed in three parts. The first consists of a general review of supply and demand problems common to all types of health manpower. The system of pharmacist supply in B.C. is outlined, as are demographic characteristics of the register. Details of the employment system are also explored. The second part of the study is devoted to developing a method for projecting future growth of the number of pharmacists. From a complex model which illustrates the flows of manpower in and out of active licensed status, the main elements of supply and loss are identified. Trends surrounding these individual factors are analysed, and several projections for growth are made under varying policy assumptions. The third phase of the study presents the findings of a survey of individual pharmacists to determine their employment situation in 1977 and 1978. Several estimates of total retail prescription demand in British Columbia are made, using data from the responses of individual dispensing pharmacists and community pharmacy managers. The staffing patterns in community pharmacies to meet this demand are examined. Prescription workloads of community pharmacists are compared to norms previously developed by the profession, and time distributions, use of auxiliary personnel, and computer aids are determined. For the hospital pharmacy field, the staffing levels are compared to standards of the Canadian Society of Hospital Pharmacists, and estimates of pharmacist time spent in drug utilization review are compared to the recommendation of the federally funded 1975 Working Party on Standards for Institutional Pharmacy Service. The findings of the study lead to conclusions that the profession has a capacity for growth of its manpower supply that is as large, and perhaps even larger than the growth of the population it will serve by 1990; but it will not likely grow at the very high rates experienced in the mid-1970's. On the demand side the conclusions are basically similar to those of the Royal Commission on Health Services in 1966: viz., in hospital pharmacy there are too few pharmacists. This is no longer due to a lack of attractiveness of the field, nor to a large disparity in its wage rates, but rather to the lack of an official provincial policy on institutional pharmacy services and staffing levels. In the field of community pharmacy there is still a drug dispensing overcapacity due to large numbers of relatively small outlets. While little work was done to explore costs, the wide variation in pharmacist dispensing loads indicated that there were likely extreme cost pressures on pharmacies with low prescription volume. Among the recommendations arising out of the study are proposals that these data be given careful consideration by the College of Pharmacists of B.C., the B.C.Pharmacists' Society and the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences in their role as planning agencies. The maintenance of a data base will continue to be important, and further research should be done on the growth and age distribution of the manpower supply, the economic base of community pharmacy, and the staffing and services in institutional pharmacies. / Medicine, Faculty of / Population and Public Health (SPPH), School of / Graduate

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Class of 2017 Abstract / Objectives: To explore whether rural pharmacists express more stigmatized attitudes towards patients with psychiatric disorders, compared to their urban counterparts. Methods: Data was collected from participants attending the AzPA Southwestern Clinical Pharmacy Seminar during a weekend in February, 2015, using a questionnaire adapted from the Mental Illness: Clinicians’ Attitudes (MICA) Scale v4. The questionnaire consisted of demographic and attitude assessment questions regarding patients suffering from psychiatric disorders across different domains (quality of life, fear of patients, admitting to having a psychiatric disorder, and more). Participants were also asked if they would be interested in taking a continuing education course on mental health. Results: The majority of participants that completed the study were women (75%) and identified racially as white (89%). Pharmacists practice settings were as follows: 79% of pharmacists worked in urban areas and 21% in rural areas. Rural pharmacists displayed significantly higher rates of stigmatized attitudes compared to their urban peers (mean scale score 37.65 vs. 40.15, p=0.049). Conclusions: Pharmacists that practice in rural settings expressed more stigmatized attitudes, compared to their urban counterparts, towards patients diagnosed with psychiatric disorders.

Class of 2010 Abstract / OBJECTIVES: To investigate whether the use of electronic-prescriptions reduces the amount of interventions being performed by pharmacists in a retail community setting. METHODS: Investigators directly observed local community pharmacist for a period of 3 weeks, during the working hours of 9am to 6pm. Information recorded with each intervention was the type of prescription, drug in question, reasons for intervention, final outcome, and time spent performing intervention. RESULTS: After 3 weeks of direct observation a total of 21 interventions were performed on electronic-prescriptions versus 154 interventions on other types of prescriptions (handwritten, faxed, verbal). The percentage of prescriptions that needed interventions was 11.7% of electronic-prescriptions versus 10.3% of all other types (p = 0.565). CONCLUSIONS: In this limited study, the rate of interventions appears to be similar between electronic-prescriptions and other types of prescriptions as a whole.